Takedown Report

Prendergast avenges loss, wins historic state title

GREENSBORO — The only time South Brunswick senior wrestler Lillian Prendergast was on her back this season was when dad and coach, David, fell on top of her while celebrating her championship Saturday in the state championships.
Prendergast won the 100-pound title in the first girls wrestling state tournament sanctioned by the N.C. High School Athletic Association. The girls — in one classification — wrestled on one mat in the center of the cavernous Greensboro Coliseum at the same time the boys wrestled on four mats — for four classifications — beside the center mat. The Coliseum was nearly a sellout.
The significance of the event meant as much to Lillian as her championship. “It’s definitely amazing to see,” she said. “I remember going to tournaments, before I got to high school, seeing one or two girls in a tournament. There wasn’t very much out there. My brother wrestled a girl here at the state tournament in 2011, when it was basically unheard of to hear a girl wrestle.
“So to see the growth and the amount of people that have come out, that have done it, even though it is one of the most uncomfortable sports, it’s great to see the passion that a lot of these girls are getting from it. You have your few wrestlers at the top and you have your younger girls — they go out and get beat but they’re still coming back, they’re still coming to practice and they’re still competing.”
Lillian’s mom, Shawna, was the scorekeeper at Lillian’s high school matches. Shawna, too, was thrilled by the state event. “I think the thing that excited me the most,” she said, “was the fact that our ladies are out there now. That is huge. We have been here for 20 years and this is the first time we got to see girls showcase (their wrestling). They’re here in the Greensboro Coliseum. This was just spectacular to see. That was what was the most emotional, seeing that.”
Rivals meet for title
Prendergast won the title by beating Corinth Holders junior Anna Ockerman 2-0. They know each other well. Entering the match, they had wrestled each other six times. “We have wrestled each other so much that we both kind of know certain things about each other,” Lillian said. “It’s hard to pregame because we know she’s practicing what to defend on me, and I’m doing the same with her.”
Of those six previous matches, Ockerman had won four. Last season she beat Prendergast in the Girls Invitational East Regional final, winning by fall with 31 seconds left, and last season she beat Prendergast 2-0 in the match for third place in the 100-pound class in the Girls Wrestling Invitational, the de facto state tournament.
This season, Prendergast wrestled Ockerman on Dec. 28 for the title in the Gate City Grapple and Prendergast prevailed 6-2. But in the East Regional on Feb. 3, Ockerman beat Prendergast 4-1 for the title. The loss was the first of the season for Prendergast. … story and more pictures at … Stateportpilot.com/Article_42c0cca8-d0f3

February 21, 2024 Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized | Leave a comment